Some point to the regime of former Yugoslav strongman Slobodan Milosevic as the turning point.Critics accuse Milosevic of whipping up animosity between ethnic groups with nationalist politics to hold onto power and try to keep Yugoslavia intact.This has institutionalized the ethnic chasm and stunted reintegration of the society, critics say.Sara Radusinovic, an ethnic Serb student from Banja Luka, Bosnia's second-largest city, knows the story of Sarajevo's "Romeo and Juliet" and sympathizes.Consulting separate pages on the Croatian and the Serbian phrasebooks may prove beneficial to those interested in better understanding such regional differences.The Serbo-Croatian pronounciation, like other Slavic languages, is very phonetic.

The bodies remained in the no-man's land of besieged Sarajevo for nearly four days before Serbian forces surrounding the city sent some Muslim prisoners to gather them. They were not from the same tribe, they did not have the same god, but they had each other and a dream of escaping it all," go the lyrics of Bosko And Admira, a rock song by the Sarajevo band Zabranjeno Pusenje that marked the 20th anniversary of the couple's death in 2013.But before the wars that accompanied Yugoslavia's demise, Bosnia was an exception to the rule.Mixed communities among its population -- 40 percent of which is Muslim, 31 percent Bosnian Serb, and 10 percent Bosnian Croat -- were commonplace.According to a survey by the Pew Center, published in May, only 40 percent of non-Muslim Bosnians would accept Muslims into their family even though almost three-quarters of respondents say a multicultural society is better than a religious and ethnically homogeneous one.There are similar figures for non-Orthodox or non-Catholic Bosnians who say the same about members of those groups.